AT LEAST 250 people sleeping rough each night.
Over 2,300 ringing the doorbell of emergency accommodation.
Tens of thousands of families in insecure temporary sleeping arrangements.
Welcome to homelessness in Ireland in 2014, defying any simple definition, spiralling out of control, and creating a sub-class of vulnerable citizens in Irish society.
Who is to blame? What is being done about it in the short-term emergency – and the long-term strategy? What could we learn from management and solutions of homelessness outside of Ireland?
Those are some of the complex questions TheJournal.ie is going to try to address in an important week-long series beginning on the site and on your app tomorrow morning.
We’ll be crunching data to create a clearer picture on who is suffering in the current crisis…
Hearing from homeless people in their own words and voice…
Examining the crisis in its social, political, economic context…
Tomorrow: Defining homelessness – the data, the variations, the human stories behind the crisis.
Tuesday: How bad is it, really? The situation on the ground from frontline workers, those experiencing homelessness and the organisations trying to manage and tackle the causes.
Wednesday: Homelessness and society: what it means to those of us who HAVE a home – and how we can’t afford to write off homelessness as a phenomenon that doesn’t affect the ‘mainstream’.
Thursday: The current ‘solutions’ – down and out in Leinster House (and what our policymakers are doing about it).
Friday: The future? What might be done, could be done, SHOULD be done – an examination of solutions being proferred elsewhere, the brightest ideas that experts in all fields are exploring – and the chances of them working in Ireland.
We hope to create a more complex conversation than the current handwringing over homelessness – and we’d like your thoughts, suggestions, experiences to help us make this conversation as loud and constructive as possible.
Throughout the week, you will be able to follow and engage with our Homeless Ireland series at:
Please, join us.
Pic: Andrew Bennett via Flickr/Creative Commons
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